


All the Things that Glitter Green

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Thief (Video Game Original Series)
Genre: Gen, Time travel leads to awkward conversation with past self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: It's been a strange sort of night in the City.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31
Collections: Writing Rainbow Green





	All the Things that Glitter Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> Given the chance to write for Thief I will _always_ take it. I love these games so, so much, so I'm delighted to have the chance to write for them, albeit a little (by which I mean extremely) nervous about the prospect of introducing this world with its folk horror, mediaeval and steampunk elements to the fandom-blind. These are the games that basically created the entire stealth genre, heavily influencing the Dishonored series and the stealth aspects of the later Elder Scrolls games, and in many ways they've arguably never been bettered. (They can usually be bought ridiculously cheap during Steam sales, too. Just saying. ;D)

_"The most promising acolyte left us, not out of the lesser folly of sentiment, but the greater folly of anger. His heart was clouded, and his balance was lost, but his abilities were unmatched. Even then, we knew to watch him most carefully."_

– _From the_ _Keeper Annals_

It had been a strange sort of night.

The girl had been a Pagan. That much at least Garrett knew.

In her calf-length homespun linen dress and with the way she smiled at him as she passed, she would have caught his eye even if it hadn’t been for the markings that swirled around one eye and the wilting flowers knotted into her hair. She couldn’t have been much more than sixteen or seventeen, only a year or two older than him, and she was lovely, her smile so sweet that even Garrett, whose customary expression was a glower, almost found himself smiling back. At least until she caught hold of his wrist and he saw the shining brightness in her dark eyes. He didn’t recognise it for fanaticism, not then, but it was enough to make the foolish grin freeze on his face. He tried to pull away. She clung on tight.

“He's _coming_ ,” she told him, joy shining from her eyes. The fingers clamped around his wrist tightened, hard enough to hurt. “He promised.”

Only then did he take in what she was wearing: how her dress was splattered black with something that shimmered wetly beneath the weak yellow light of the crackling actinic streetlight. A Pagan. And he remembered the Hunter’s Moon, hanging full and fat over the City, and the stories he’d heard about how the Wild Hunt rode out on nights like this, deep in the sweltering heat of midsummer. How this was the sort of night that the Pagans’ god demanded sacrifice. His heart hammering, he wrenched away again and this time she let him.

Garrett's gaze had dropped to her bare feet, naked and white, and as she lifted a foot, balancing on the other like a dancer, he saw how the soles were cut to ribbons and filthy. She grinned, baring her teeth at him, heedless of the filthy stones and broken glass. “The Trickster is coming back and you'll see. Everything will be okay.”

After that, very little had gone right.

Distracted, he’d allowed himself to get caught trying to pick a pocket, and while his customary plea of “Please, sir, I'm hungry,” might have worked back when he’d been a half-starved urchin in ragged clothes, these days he was clean and a little better fed, and not the sort likely to inspire pity. The man had called not for the bluecoats, but worse: for a _Hammerite,_ and since the Hammerites had even less mercy for thieves than they did for Pagans and heretics, Garrett had narrowly escaped getting his skull crushed to a bloody pulp by a hammer that must have weighed almost as much as he did.

But silver linings: he’d at least kept his wits enough to keep a tight grip on the purse and enough wisdom to know when to call it a night. On his way north towards Stonemarket, he stuck to the thieves’ highway, leery of the streets below and aware of the purse weighing his pocket down. It didn’t feel quite so heavy as he’d hoped and he was willing to bet it hadn’t been worth almost dying over. Nor would it be worth the penetrating look Keeper Artemus would give him in the scribing rooms in the coming morning, when he was fighting to stay awake at his desk, exhausted from yet another night roaming the City in search of something he couldn’t explain, his hand aching from the unfamiliar grip of the quill and his head aching from the sight of the glyphs that he didn’t, and likely never would, understand.

He hated the glyphs, the way they made his eyes ache and a spot somewhere inside his skull itch with discomfort, the feeling he couldn’t shake sometimes like they were talking to him.

They were magic, so he’d heard, but all they were to Garrett (or perhaps all he wanted them to be) was scrawls on old parchment. And it wasn’t like it mattered. Whatever magic the Keepers knew, whatever magic it was that had allowed Keeper Artemus to walk unseen through a busy crowd on the very first day Garrett had met him, he was starting to think they had no intention of ever sharing it with him.

The Keepers kept their secrets well-hidden, squirrelled away in their cavernous library, and even that impossibly vast octagonal chamber wasn’t the end of it: Garrett had explored enough to know there were further wings to the library, their entrances well-hidden and well guarded, and the rooms beyond as equally stuffed to the gills with books as the main chamber. Garrett struggled to believe that there were so many books in the world, let alone the City.

A lowly initiate like him was barely tolerated in the main library, let alone those secret hidden places, and while Garrett normally had little interest in anything that he couldn’t sell or eat, it always made him curious when people went to great lengths to hide things. Especially when they were hiding them from him. It was one reason to let Keeper Artemus teach him to read, he supposed; at least then he’d have half a chance of figuring out just what it was they were so intent on keeping secret.

The Keepers’ compound was hidden too. The sprawling building that bordered Stonemarket had long ago been shrouded by glyphs so that it went unseen by all except the initiated. He still hadn’t quite learned the knack of seeing it, especially close up. Right now he couldn’t see it at all.

The gap between the sloping roof on which he stood and the block of tenements opposite appeared too wide for him to jump across. Even if it hadn't been, the tenement building opposite was a sheer cliff-face of soot-darkened stone, once dove-grey and now darkened to a dirty yellowish beige, with windows shuttered with rusting metal slats.

_Only an idiot would do something so stupid._

He looked at the tenement. Tried to focus his vision. Thought he saw, just for an instant, another building entirely, one of shining grey stone. Then it was gone and there was an ache pressing against his eyeballs. He looked down, saw the ground far, far below, and laughed without humour.

He backed up, knowing that he was mad, that by all rights they should have packed him off to Shalebridge, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, despite all the stories he’d heard, and then his bony shoulder blades were pressing against the half-timbered wall behind him, and he knew there was nothing for it. If he bottled it now, he wouldn’t be able to summon up the courage for a second go.

He took a breath. Cursed himself. And then he ran, sprinting as fast as he could, his gaze fixed on the cliff of stone and rusting metal that was just a little bit further than he could jump and offered no convenient handholds should a miracle occur and he got lucky. His thoughts screamed at him as he flung himself off the edge, arms wheeling as he reached the apex of his jump and began his descent, the tenement building still too damned far away. A moment of heart-stopping terror gripped him as he saw the ground below, with no piles of stinking refuse or stall canopies to break his fall, and knew he was going to die. That the fall would kill him. With any luck it'd do so quickly, but knowing _his_ luck, it wouldn't. Maybe it’d just shatter his spine, and he’d die slowly. Maybe–

 _Oh. Shit._ He really was falling. It was too far. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened his mouth to scream–

And struck a solid surface with his feet, his momentum carrying him forward into a roll. He tumbled, gasping, into a sprawling heap on a balcony that part of him – still: no matter how many times he did this – would have sworn wasn’t there seconds before.

He collapsed on his back, caught between tears and breathless laugher, waiting for his heart to stop pounding against his ribs. Waiting until he could sit up without feeling faint.

He mopped his sweating forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, grinning. It never seemed to lose its power, this jump. Every time, every single time, there was always that moment of all-consuming terror, the certainty that his time with the Keepers had just been a dream, some fantasy fuelled by starvation or madness or fever, and that one of these days the building wouldn't appear and he'd end his short, miserable life as a bloodied splat on the cobblestones.

“Not this time,” he muttered, and pushed himself up.

He went, as he always did, to the stone balustrade, and peered over it at the alley far below, relishing the dizzying rush he felt at the drop, then he slipped through the propped-open shutter and into the cloistered halls of the Keepers where he did not, and never would, belong.

Even this late, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that halls of the Keepers' compound were ever truly empty. And it wasn’t even the enforcers, the silent masked figures who stalked the corridors and acted as the Keepers’ guards. At least Garrett could hear them coming, even if the sound he heard wasn’t one he heard with his ears (and better not too think too hard about the implications of _that_ ). Some of the adult Keepers never seem to sleep at all. There were one or two who he suspected might actually have taken root in the library they moved so rarely from their desks with the scribes scurrying to and fro carrying piles of requested books and scrolls.

And then there was the Translator who spoke for Interpreter Caduca, who turned the Keepers’ cryptic books of glyphs into even more cryptic prophecies. While Caduca was impossibly ancient, the Translator was a child, a girl even younger than Garrett. So she seemed at first glance, anyway, but he’d seen how ancient her eyes were and from what he’d heard she’d been Caduca’s Translator for a _long_ time. The few times she’d noticed him, Garrett had felt like he was being flayed alive. She gave him the creeps.

On a landing, where every sound muffled by the thick tapestries hanging upon the stone walls, he slowed at the muted sound of footsteps and a corona of light cast by a candle held by someone coming up the stairs. Then he picked up his pace, hurrying rapidly along the landing through an arched doorway, and ducked out of sight, keeping low and close to the wall as he moved past the corridor that led to the libraries and scribing rooms. He bit back a curse as he caught sight of further movement ahead, but turning back he saw the glimmer of the candle and heard the murmur of voices of two Keepers deep in discussion.

Nothing for it. The only thing he could do was duck into the corridor that led up to the offices of the First Keeper and pray to whatever might be listening that there was no one on guard. Concealing himself in one of the patches of shadow between the pools of light cast by the torch sconces, he waited, breathing quietly through his mouth, willing his heart to slow its pace, until they passed by, and pray that none of them decided that now was the perfect time to pay a visit to the First Keeper.

He held his breath, willing the shadows to swallow him up. Exhaled in relief when they passed and it seemed like the danger was over, at least until he felt the prickle of sensation at the nape of his neck.

There was a man behind him. Apparently caught in the act of coming down the stairs, an expression of startled annoyance giving away to bemusement as he stared at Garrett. The light of a torch momentarily played over half of a narrow bony face as he descended, leaving the right-hand side of his features in shadow, and suddenly from deep in that shadow there came a sudden piercing flash of emerald green. As the man descended a couple more steps, the man raised a finger to his lips and the shadows resolved so that Garrett could see the glitter of green was his eye, unnaturally bright in a way that made Garrett’s skin prickle with a thrill of unease.

Not a Keeper, or at least not like any kind of Keeper Garrett had ever seen even if the man did wear their symbol, a silver keyhole, on a chain about his neck. The man didn’t look like he belonged here. In fact, he had the air of one who was up to no good. The sort of fellow Garrett was certainly used to seeing, but not here of all places, in this tightly knit conclave of well-bred and wealthy scholars who’d never known a day of hunger in their lives. Garrett had heard that a select few of their number spent most of their time investigating ancient ruins in search of lost knowledge, although why they’d bother with that when there was probably treasure to be found Garrett didn’t know.

The man stopped a few steps away, studying Garrett frankly. “Well, this place really is full of surprises,” he said. His gravelly voice was low, and he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Garrett, whose gaze flitted up the stairs to the door that led to the First Keeper’s office. He frowned when he realised that no sliver of light shone from under the door, and spoke before his mind caught up with him and reminded him to be circumspect.

“What were you doing in there?” he demanded.

The man gave him an appraising look. “Probably the same thing you’re doing out of the initiate dormitories,” he said, and Garrett clenched his jaw so hard his back teeth ached. “Why? Are you going to tell?”

“Are _you_?”

The man gave a one-shouldered none-of-my-business shrug and started down the stairs, seeming to turn his hooded face away from Garrett and away from the torchlight as if he didn’t want to be seen. Alarmed by his approach, Garrett began to back away down the steps, then stopped dead.

There was a sensation rising inside his skull, like a sharpened fingernail scratching at the very centre of his thoughts. It grew and grew and grew until it had taken on the form of a voice lowered to a savage whisper and it raged like the buzzing of a swarm of insects in his head.

An enforcer, and it was getting closer.

The hatred came off it in waves so intense that it dizzied him, disorienting him enough that he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. He was already tensed to run, and might well have dashed directly into the damn thing’s path if a firm arm hadn’t curled around his chest and hauled him back up the steps and deeper into shadow, another calloused hand clamping firmly over his mouth.

He struggled, trying on instinct to bite at the hand over his mouth, until the man hissed in his ear to be quiet. He went still at once, his skull so crowded with its seething rage there was barely room for his own thoughts, for anything but the instinctive terror of a boy who’d only just begun to suspect just how much trouble he was in if he got caught.

The whispering in his skull rose to a crescendo, and he shuddered. Knowing, from the few words he caught in the unceasing static of its voice that it was aware of his presence, that it was _hunting_ for him, and oh shit, when it found him… when it found him...

And then he saw it in the corridor below, its steps unnaturally silent. Light glimmered on the carved metal of its mask beneath the hood of its robe. A keening note of terror rose up from his chest and he fought it, not wanting to make a sound, desperate to close his eyes so he wouldn’t see it coming and too terrified to do so.

It passed by without so much as glancing their way. The hand over his mouth loosened.

As the howling void of fury in his mind dimmed, his thoughts began to creep back in. Garrett glanced up at the man, saw the gleaming eye shining bright in the gloom, the strain in his face and the tension in his clenched jaw. And he’d reacted before he had seen the enforcer too: he’d known it was coming, the same way Garrett had.

Gradually the storm of the enforcer’s thoughts faded again to a whisper, to the slightest scratching of a fingernail in Garrett’s skull, and finally, at the last, to a sensation in his ears like trapped water.

It was gone.

When he was certain they were as safe as they were ever likely to be, Garrett pulled away, feeling inexplicably angry. “You can hear them coming too. I never met anyone else that could before.”

“Sorry to tell you this, kid,” the man muttered, “but you still haven’t.”

“What?”

The man didn’t answer. Instead he shoved past Garrett and edged down the stairs, moving almost as silently as Garrett did, as the enforcer did, and leaned out to check the corridor.

“Must come in handy,” he said when he’d apparently judged the coast was clear and slipped out into the corridor. “If you plan on making a habit of sneaking out into the City.”

“How come I never seen you before?” Garrett countered, following him. The man reached up and gripped the symbol of the Keepers that hung about his neck, tugging on it before replying.

“Because I don’t belong here.”

“You’re not a Keeper?”

“ _No._ I’m just their tool. That’s all I ever was. And I don't remember kids asking so many questions in my day.” The man glanced at him and his expression softened, although the bitterness in his voice remained. “What did you see out in the City?”

Garrett opened his mouth to protest, then he saw the look the man shot him and thought better of lying. Besides he had the feeling this man wouldn’t give a damn if he’d been sneaking out. “A girl. A Pagan. She...” He shivered, remembering the devotion in her eyes. “She said the Trickster was coming back.”

“Maybe he is,” the man murmured, staring at him.

“The Trickster doesn’t exist,” Garrett said, and then, with a shiver of thrill at speaking a heresy aloud, he added, “He’s just a Hammerite lie.” The man just cast him a look, frowning in the depths of the shadows beneath his hood. He seemed about to say something, but before he could speak, there was a sound of a soft footfall in the corridor.

The man’s gaze jerked up, but it was too late: they’d been discovered. Not by the enforcer, but by Keeper Artemus

Garrett’s heart sank.

Right then, in that frozen moment, he would have given _anything_ for it to have been one of the other Keepers who had discovered them. Keeper Orland, maybe, or that creepy child who made his skin itch like it was two sizes too small. An enforcer, even,

Anyone but Keeper Artemus, who had been the one to pull back the curtain and bring him here after Garrett had tried to pick his pocket. Who had been nothing but kind to him, treatment which Garrett instinctively distrusted, since he’d learned the hard way during his years on the streets that kindness could not be trusted. Even if Artemus meant well – and Garrett was grudgingly beginning to suspect that he did – kindness seemed as much a prison as Shalebridge Asylum or the windowless walls of the bare stone cell in which he slept.

But Keeper Artemus had argued in Garrett’s favour against the protestations of the others that he couldn’t be trusted, that he was nothing, a worthless illiterate little street-rat who stole as easily as breathing, and who didn’t understand the importance of their books and glyphs.

Well, they were definitely right about that last bit, and in fairness they were probably right about the other bits too, but now Artemus would know that too, would look at him the same way the others looked at him, like he was nothing but a _thief_.

But the Keeper didn’t even seem to have noticed him; instead he was staring at the stranger with a strange sort of expression that Garrett had never seen on his face before, something between shock and sorrow and fascination, and he was moving slowly forwards, not seeming to notice the way the man’s expression had tightened.

“Oh,” he said softly.

“Keeper Artemus,” the man said grimly. “I seem to have lost my way.”

Artemus glanced at Garrett, who froze guiltily in the act of trying to sneak away, then turned his attention back to the man. “There was a time when you knew these corridors better than any of the Keepers I could name.”

“When I was a boy, maybe. It’s been a while. I thought I’d better acquaint myself with the layout.” The man paused. “You don’t seem surprised to see me here.”

“I have lived in this compound a long time. I know better than to be surprised by anything that happens within these walls.” Artemus moved closer, lifting his hand to push back the man’s hood and Garrett caught his breath. Light from the torch sconce played over the narrow bony face, revealing a head of dark curls which fell forwards over a pale forehead and illuminating an ugly scar that twisted across his mismatched right eye, the one that glittered an unnatural shade of emerald green. Garrett saw a muscle bunching in the man’s jaw, heard Artemus’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh, my boy,” the Keeper whispered.

“ _Don’t._ ” There was anger for the first time in the man’s voice, a momentary flash of rage on his face. He jerked his hand up and knocked Artemus’s hand away from his face. “You would have sacrificed more than this, so don’t waste my time with pity, old man.”

For a moment, Artemus’s face was flooded with pain and regret, then he inclined his head and stepped away, his face smoothing over until it was expressionless, as smooth and flat as the surface of a reflecting pond. “Very well.” He placed his hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Come. It’s time you were in bed, young Garrett,” he said and started to lead him away.

The man lounged against a wall, watching them go. “Worried I’m a bad influence on the boy, Artemus? Or that I’ll tell him something you Keepers don’t want him to hear?”

Artemus stopped, his hand a dead weight on Garrett’s shoulder. “You may tell him anything you wish.”

Garrett looked back, expectant, but the man said nothing, clenching his jaw but otherwise apparently willing to let them go without another word. Stung, Garrett wavered, then curiosity won out. He pulled away from Artemus, and turned back, calling, “What happened to your eye?”

There was a moment of silence. The man stared at him, emotions warring on his face. A long time passed before he spoke, his voice laced with bitterness. “Nothing good.”

Artemus sighed placed his hand upon Garrett’s shoulder again. “Garrett,” he said with a faint sad note of warning, but oddly he seemed not to be talking to Garrett at all.

The man tugged his hood back up, plunging his scarred face back into shadow. And strangely enough, he didn’t seem to be speaking to Garrett either, but to Keeper Artemus, as if _he_ was the one who’d asked the question and was waiting, breath bated, for the answer. “But it was a price worth paying.”

Privately, Garrett doubted that.


End file.
